We examine whether the market demand curve for equities is dawnward sloping. Unlike previous studies that examine individual stocks' demand curves, we look at the aggregate demand curve. As a proxy for aggregate demand, we employ equity mutual fund flows. Unlike previous studies that focus on events that are unlikely to convey new information to the market, we devise an empirical framework that disentangles the price-pressure effect and the information effect. We do not find evidence for the price-pressure effect that equity fund flows directly affect stock market prices in the presence of fundamentals of firms. Instead, we find that equity fund flows seem to be influenced by the performance of the stock market and that investors try to forecast fundamentals of firms and change their demand for stocks accordingly. Overall, these findings are with a horizontal market demand curve for equities.

The integrated CVD-PVD Al plug process was successfully applied to a sub-quarter micron device for the simultaneous formation of plugs and wires. The effects of the underlayer on the via filling and the microstructure of the CVD-PVD Al films were investigated. Three types of underlayers were examined in this work: the Ti film deposited by the ionized PVD (I-PVD) method, the MOCVD TiN film stacked on the I-PVD Ti film, and the PVD Al film deposited on the I-PVD Ti film. Excellent via filling was achieved by employing the MOCVD TiN/I-PVD Ti or the PVD Al/I-PVD Ti as an underlayer. When only I-PVD Ti film was used as an underlayer, complete via filling was not obtained, because the CVD Al film sealed the top of vias. The CVD-PVD Al film deposited on the PVD Al/I-PVD Ti underlayer also showed excellent crystallographic texture of Al <111> and surface morphology, which is superior to those of the CVD-PVD Al film deposited on the MOCVD TiN/I-PVD Ti underlayer.